The Woman Thou Gavest Me eBook

At three o’clock next day (which was the day
before the day fixed for the reception) I heard the
motor-car going off to meet my husband at Blackwater.
At four o’clock I heard it return. A few
minutes afterwards I heard my husband’s voice
in the hall. I thought he would come up to me
directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt
to go down. When, after a while, I asked what
had become of him, I was told that he was in the library
with Alma, and that they were alone.

Two hours passed.

To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly
my husband had behaved to me. I remembered that
he had married me from the most mercenary motives;
that he had paid off his mistress with the money that
came through me; that he had killed by cruelty the
efforts I had made to love him; that he had humiliated
me by gross infidelities committed on my honeymoon.
I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris,
and the insults I had received under my own roof.

It was all in vain. Whether God means it that
the woman’s fault in breaking her marriage vows
(whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall be greater
than that of the man I do not know. I only know
that I was trembling like a prisoner before her judge
when, being dressed for dinner and waiting for the
sound of the bell, I heard my husband’s footsteps
approach my door.

I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held
on to the mantelpiece as my husband came into the
room.

SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost
of brutality, which pierced his manner at normal moments
had deepened, and I could see at a glance that he
was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from
his slow grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which
replaced it trembled.

Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of
salutation he plunged immediately into the matter
that was uppermost in his mind.

“I am still at a loss to account for this affair
of your father’s,” he said. “Of
course I know what it is supposed to be—­a
reception in honour of our home-coming. That
explanation may or may not be sufficient for these
stupid islanders, but it’s rather too thin for
me. Can you tell me what your father means by
it?”

I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling
like a sheep that walks up to a barking dog:

“Hadn’t you better ask that question of
my father himself?”

“Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn’t,
so I ask you. Your father is a strange man.
There’s no knowing what crude things he will
not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But
he does not spend five or ten thousand pounds for
nothing. He isn’t a fool exactly.”

“Thank you,” I said. I could not
help it. It was forced out of me.

My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the
bully in him, which always lay underneath, came uppermost.